The Hidden AI Workforce: 29% of Employees Pay for Their Own AI Tools While Bosses Provide No Training

In an exclusive survey, Exploding Topics found that 29% pay for their own AI tools at work, often without their bosses’ knowledge. And most receive little to no training.

Our survey of more than 1,000 AI users reveals a workplace rushing to adopt AI, but failing to properly support it. There’s a shadow army of AI-powered employees working without oversight, and in many cases, without permission.

We found a massive embrace of AI, both at home and at work.

But amid skyrocketing usage, we also found lingering concerns, a significant age and wealth divide, and a general lack of workplace training — as well as widespread, potentially unauthorized use of personal AI tools in a professional capacity.

The research also uncovers sharp divides in AI comfort, trust, and usage, and even some surprising personal use cases, from therapy sessions to relationship advice.

Fast Facts

• Daily users: 35.49% of AI users use the tools every day
• Paying out of pocket: 29% pay for their own AI tools at work
• No support: Half (50.11%) get little or no training from employers
• Personal confessions: 34.48% have asked AI for personal or relationship advice
• Privacy: only 20.26% are uneasy about sharing personal info with AI
• Productivity: 79.67% report higher output thanks to AI
• Lingering fears: Only 9.78% have no concerns about AI at work.
• Job loss anxiety: High earners are more than twice as likely to fear AI replacing them
• Positive overall: 91.85% say their work AI experience is at least somewhat positive

A significant minority resist AI entirely

The majority of our survey was carried out among people who reported using AI at home or at work. But to find this 1003-strong group, we first had to ask a filter question.

This produced our core group of survey respondents. But it also provided its own insight.

20.06% of people still report not using AI at all, either in a personal or professional capacity.

A further 4.58% were unsure if they had ever used AI.

That still means more than three-quarters of people are now using AI to some extent. But it is not yet entirely ubiquitous.

Another one of our recent original surveys found that there is a significant gap between AI usage and AI trust. So among the hold-outs, lack of trust may well be a reason for avoiding AI tools altogether.

AI is an everyday home tool now

The rest of our survey focused on the people who do use AI.

And people who use AI are now using it very regularly: every day in many cases.

To be precise, 35.49% of respondents are using AI every day. A further 39.38% of people are using it “a few times a week”.

All in all, 84.84% of AI users are using it at least once a week.

And only a tiny percentage (1%) use AI exclusively at work, with no personal usage whatsoever.

The increase in AI usage

The use of AI has increased steeply in the past year.

84.58% of users have increased their AI usage in the past 12 months.

48.49% of people say they are using AI “a lot more”, while 36.09% report a slight increase.

Only 3.13% have reduced their AI usage in the past 12 months, while just 0.71% use it “much less” than they did 12 months ago.

Use of AI has increased most markedly among the highest earners.

72.84% of respondents with a household income of over $200,000 now use AI “much more” than they did a year ago. A further 20.99% use it “slightly more”, and only 1.23% have decreased their usage.

Nobody with a household income higher than $99,999 reports using AI “much less” than they did 12 months ago.

The AI tools being used at home

ChatGPT has earned a dominant position in the home. Among those who use AI tools, 83.27% use ChatGPT.

(That tracks, given that ChatGPT has 800 million weekly users.)

Google’s AI Mode has earned the next-most traction among personal users. 41.13% of AI users are now using this AI-first search tool.

Gemini, Meta, and Copilot (in Windows/Microsoft products) are the next-most-popular home AI tools. DeepSeek rounds out the top six, with marginally more popularity than Claude.

Grok Usage Shows Sharp Gender Divide

17.86% of men use Grok for personal tasks, compared to just 6.95% of women. That’s not altogether surprising, given that men outnumber women on X by roughly 2:1.

The (highly) personal uses of AI

Nearly 1 in 4 users turn to AI for therapy or counseling, according to our survey. That’s despite the CEO of OpenAI saying the idea makes him uneasy.

In our survey, 37.1% of respondents also said they use it for health and wellness advice.

This health focus mirrors recent messaging from OpenAI. During the recent GPT-5 launch, CEO Sam Altman said that the model “empowers you to be more in control of your healthcare journey.”

Yet just weeks before, Altman said the use of ChatGPT for therapy made him “uneasy”.

42.4% of respondents say that they have used AI at home for financial planning or budgeting. In fact, finances are the area most people would choose if AI could solve just one problem in their life.

And more than 1 in 3 (34.48%) have used AI for help with relationship or personal problems.

Men (37.28%) are more likely than women (31.58%) to turn to AI for relationship or personal advice.

And almost half (46.97%) of respondents in the Mid-Atlantic have used AI for this kind of guidance. Take-up is lowest in the Mountain region (20.34%).

Two use cases have been adopted by more than 50% of all AI users: question-answering/ research, and creating/ editing text.

63.31% of respondents use AI to conduct research or get answers to questions. In that sense, it is being used more or less like a search engine.

Meanwhile, 52.02% of respondents use AI to create/edit text.

Other popular uses include entertainment and learning new skills.

Deeply personal use cases, but limited privacy concerns

Users are clearly sharing sensitive information with AI, but they are generally not worried about privacy.

Just 7.56% of AI users say that they avoid sharing personal information with AI tools altogether. Only another 12.7% say they are “somewhat uncomfortable” doing so.

Meanwhile, more than half of users (56.36%) are either “very” or “somewhat” comfortable sharing personal information. Almost 1 in 4 are neutral, saying that it depends on the situation.

Among those using AI for therapy or counselling, only 4.29% are even “somewhat” uncomfortable about sharing their personal information.

The 18-29 age group is the least comfortable sharing personal information with AI tools.

Only 13.89% of young people are “very comfortable” doing so, compared to more than 31% of AI users aged 30-44. And more than a quarter are at least “somewhat uncomfortable”.

Richer respondents are also more likely to be comfortable sharing their information with AI tools. 50.62% of the highest earners say they are “very comfortable” doing so.

Meanwhile, women are more concerned than men about sharing their personal information with AI.

Less than half of female AI users (49.47%) are at least “somewhat” comfortable sharing their personal information with AI tools. 62.72% of men are comfortable sharing the same data.

AI more popular at home than at work

The vast majority (>99%) of people who use AI at work also use it at home. But the inverse is not true.

15.57% of AI users do not use the technology at work.

Among this group of work AI abstainers, 44.9% don’t use it because of company policy. 55.1% make a choice not to use AI at work.

Women (11%) are more likely than men (6.2%) to consciously opt out of using AI at work.

Employees aged 18-29 are also statistically more likely to avoid using AI in the office.

15.74% of workers in this age group who use AI at home nonetheless actively elect not to use the technology at work. That’s compared to just 8.58% of AI users across all age groups.

Concerns about AI at work

Some common fears about using AI at work are present among both users and non-users.

Only 9.78% of all respondents had no concerns at all about using AI at work.

In stark contrast to the lack of fear about sharing personal information, 48.8% of workplace AI users cite privacy and security as a concern.

The next-biggest fear among workers is that AI may make them look replaceable, a concern shared by 43.31% of respondents. Worries about quality and accuracy (42.12%) complete the top three.

Fascinatingly, the highest earners are the most worried about being made to look replaceable. 55.56% of respondents with a household income above $200,000 cited this as a concern about AI at work.

By comparison, among workers with a household income of $25,000-$49,999, only 26.67% were worried that AI would make them seem replaceable.

Will AI Take Your Job? We Asked An Expert

AI on the rise in the office

Despite concerns, it is apparent that AI is rapidly growing in popularity in the workplace.

83.13% of people who use AI are now doing so at work. And they are employing it for a wide range of tasks.

More than 6 in 10 people (64.78%) who use AI at work use it for writing reports, emails, and presentations.

A similar number (63.48%) are using AI for editing. In other words, there’s a good chance that any written content you encounter in a business setting has had some kind of AI involvement.

Meanwhile, significant numbers of AI users are turning to the technology at work for data analysis (43.62%), creating images (34.63%), marketing summaries and note-taking (28.01%), and writing code (26%).

Women (67.87%) are slightly more likely than men (61.98%) to use AI at work for writing. But men (52.09%) are far more likely than women (33.93%) to use AI for data analysis.

The AI tools of choice at work

While there is marginally less consensus than in the home, ChatGPT is also the tool of choice at work.

70.8% of workplace AI users are using ChatGPT.

AI Mode and Gemini maintain second and third place, the same as for home usage, albeit with lower overall percentages.

But Meta falls down the rankings at work. Compared to home usage, it is overtaken by Copilot and Claude, and sits level with DeepSeek.

Claude Code and Cursor are both used more for work than home use.

AI’s impact on the workplace

The vast majority of people feel that AI has benefitted them at work.

79.67% say that AI has at least “somewhat” improved their productivity. For over a third, that improvement has been “significant”.

16.43% do not think AI has changed their productivity, but only a tiny minority think AI has actually had a negative impact in this regard. 2.25% of respondents say that their productivity has “somewhat” decreased, with 0.47% noting a “significant” drop.

Of course, productivity is not the only measure of success. But when asked to consider the overall picture, the majority of people still say that AI at work has been a positive experience.

52.84% of people who use AI at work say it has been an entirely positive experience. A further 39.01% say it has “sometimes” been positive.

This leaves a very small minority who are only reluctantly using AI at work. 4.49% of users believe the experience is “rarely” positive, and just 1.65% say that it is not at all positive.

In a recurring theme, young people are the least likely to be unequivocally positive about their experiences of AI at work.

Only 38.37% answered “yes” when asked if their experience with AI at work had been positive. That’s more than 14 percentage points lower than the overall average, and nearly 20 percentage points below the response from the 60+ age group.

Companies encourage AI, but training is often lacking

Workplaces are generally matching their employees’ eagerness to embrace AI.

42.67% of respondents say that their workplace actively encourages the use of AI. A further 41.37% allow the use of AI in some situations.

Only 3.78% believe that their employers discourage or prohibit the use of AI, while 9.57% say that their workplace has no official stance.

However, employer enthusiasm for AI is not always matched by proper training and support.

Less than half of respondents (47.04%) feel they have received “excellent” training and support from leaders and management. Almost 1 in 5 (19.5%) believe they have not received any support.

A further 30.61% describe support and training as “limited”.

Employees in the Mid-Atlantic (60.66%) and Pacific (60.12%) are most likely to report excellent support. Workers in the Mountain (32.61%) and New England (32%) regions are most likely to report no support.

The workplace AI mavericks

With training inconsistent at best, perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising that plenty of employees are taking matters into their own hands.

Only a small number admit to outright rebelling against an overt anti-AI company stance. 3.78% say they are using AI despite their organization discouraging or prohibiting it.

But with the majority of people not receiving excellent AI support at work, they are taking the initiative themselves. 28.84% exclusively pay for their own AI tools.

A further 11.58% are using some tools they have paid for themselves, alongside tools funded by an employer. So all in all, more than 4 in 10 people are at least partially paying for their own workplace AI.

And almost exactly half (50.2%) of employees are using at least one personal AI account for work tasks.

The tendency to “go rogue” and pay for one’s own AI tools increases with age.

Among respondents aged 18-29, only 19.77% pay for their own AI tools at work. That rises to 33.9% for workers aged 60 and over.

But when it comes to free tools, younger workers are actually the most likely to use personal accounts rather than official company AI software.

The picture is ultimately similar across all age groups: the control and oversight that employers exert over their employees’ AI usage is far from absolute.

At work and at home, the overall AI verdict is clear

Technology might be moving a little too fast for employers to keep up. But for now, it seems as though nothing can stop the AI train.

Overall attitudes are favorable. 91.4% at least sometimes enjoy using AI in everyday products and services.

Likewise, almost 7 in 10 respondents (69.07%) describe their overall attitude to AI as at least “somewhat” positive. Only 7.89% hold at least “somewhat” negative views.

And when asked to predict the biggest impact of AI on their lives in the next 5 years, respondents overwhelmingly gave positive answers.

Making work easier and more efficient was the most popular response.

But AI providers and workplaces alike would be wrong to assume that the new technology is inherently appealing to the young.

At home and at work, young people are consistently the most AI-skeptic, with their embrace of the technology the most qualified.

This generation will one day shape the future of AI adoption. As things stand, we expect to see them pump the brakes on a rise that so far has been stratospheric.

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